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I have a miller Syncrowave 180 that I started having issues with today.

Basically a pulsing in the arc. It almost looks like its strobe light effect. It seems to go away when I ramp the finger control all the way to max but anything less than that is unusable.

So I am out of business. Unless there is a simple fix I am just going to have to go without for a while as would rather wait a year and buy something newer technology.

Appreciate any input.

Thanks

Rich

I would start by checking the spark gap in the right side of the machine. My Syncrowave 200 had acted up with an unsteady arc a while back. I removed the right cover and checked the spark gaps. They were correct but the entire cavity was full of dust. I cleaned it thoroughly and also cleaned the gaps with a piece of paper soaked in acetone. That fixed my problem.

Hopefully your problem is something simple like that. It's a good place to start anyway. The manual shows how to do this.

I would start by checking the spark gap in the right side of the machine. My Syncrowave 200 had acted up with an unsteady arc a while back. I removed the right cover and checked the spark gaps. They were correct but the entire cavity was full of dust. I cleaned it thoroughly and also cleaned the gaps with a piece of paper soaked in acetone. That fixed my problem.

Hopefully your problem is something simple like that. It's a good place to start anyway. The manual shows how to do this.

My initial quicky test is the welder is working. It was not a very good test and I plan on giving it a workout today.

I think I had couple issues going on. First the air gap was really dirty and set to about .018 on one side. So a good cleaning to start with.

That seemed to help the weld but I couldn't see crap because of the strobing effect.

The last think I did was replace the tungsten which probably didn't have anything to do with it and also checked the batteries on my Miller Elite hood. The low batter light was not on but one battery showed 1.8 volts and the other about 2.7. So a fresh set of batteries and the strobe effect was gone.

So I think it was airgap causing the wandering erratic weld and hood batteries making it hard to see/diagnose !